What's wrong with sex?

If ever a word was discriminated against by the modern broadcasters and politically correct journalists it is the word SEX. A very short word. It is not even a four-letter word. It has an absolute meaning, which for whatever reason, is being usurped by a prattish lot of poseurs and pimping politicians. As the late Lord Hailsham said, "sex is what you are, either male or female, nothing more!".

But it does mean more. "Having sex" is a popular expression, or it was. By popular, I mean it was frequently used by many in the populace. A fairly meaningless piece of English but well understood by everyone. Sex became a dirty word. So dirty in fact that it could not be cleaned up to impress the new-fangled lot who now infect every inch of the airwaves with their newfound word "GENDER"!

Gender is a far better word for them. It has no foul connotations. Anyone heard of "having gender"? Try shoving that one into a Hollywood blockbuster. Sex is on a backburner wordwise. This morning on the Today Programme Evan Davis asked about gender as if six or seven varieties were a possible answer. And that is the thing. Gender is so maleable as a word, whereas sex is not. "I'm a lady, yes I am!" "Come on, sir, what's yer name?" "BRIAN!"

All government forms ask about gender. Sex appears nowhere. It has been expunged from the forms, only to appear in the nether regions of a rusting computer's database. The same happened to Christian names. My mother got the frosty reply, "well, not all people are Christians!" when she once had the temerity to enquire about that. I suppose I would get a similar response if I tried to solicit an answer about sex. "Well, not all people are having sex, sir". Quite!

Humpty Dumpty English!

The English Language is getting a pounding of late. Does it matter? Are we troubled by the way English is used? The BBC are helping two words flourish in ways they should not be used. The first is REPOSSESSION. Only this morning on News24, Declan Curry was happily chatting about REPOSSESSIONS! Does he know what the word means? Probably yes, but his self-regulatory mechanism is failing to get him, and countless others, to use the word FORECLOSURE!

Now a lot of Brits have a go at Americans for what they see as abuse of the language, but in many cases it is the Americans that are correct. A person or company can only repossess something that they already own. A car on hire purchase can be repossessed. A bank or building society does not own property in these cases. They are not landlords. By constantly repeating this word, REPOSSESSION, it conveys a message, on a drip-drip basis, that property ownership is in the hands of the banks.

The Americans quite rightly speak of mortgage foreclosures. One forecloses on a loan if a person is in default. However, that person has options to safeguard their financial situation. They can 1) Remortgage to get a better deal, or 2) Sell the property for a cheaper one, or 3) Pay off the loan in its entirety (not the most likely situation, I admit). In all this, the lender does not and never will own the property, providing the mortgage is paid according to agreements.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' Taking the Humpty Dumpty view of language, using the word repossession in place of foreclosure, the whole emphasis is moved from one of ownership to one of dependency. It is very easy for people to say "Oh, well, the bank own's my house!", even if they mean it in gest. It is also not the right word in the first place!

The second word is tiny, but, boy, has it permeated the whole of society. That word is OF! Here again, BBC News and almost everyone else is using OF when it is not necessary. ALL OF THE TIME! All OF this, all OF that! It is not needed. All this, and all that! That is all that is needed!

I appreciate that it is not a great grammatical sin. Most who say "all of" will resist stepping into "off of", but it appears to be a symptom of the way English is going. Pendantry can be self-destructive, but I think a certain maintenance of standards should be encouraged without letting the pedants loose!